In this step-by-step guide, we will install and configure Redash on CentOS 6. Redash is an open source software which is used to query, visualize and share data. It can be connected to a number of sources (e.g. MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB etc.) to collect data.

Redash helps you to make your company data driven. Using it, dashboard and charts can be created easily and shared across team. This helps to develop a culture inside company which depends on metrics and analytics. The catch here is not to analyse data ‘for sake of it’ and choose the right metrics for analysis.

Redash provides a provisioning script for Ubuntu 16.04. They also provide images for AWS, Google Compute Cloud and Docker. But, they have discontinued Amazon Linux AMI support and no provisioning scripts are available for CentOS. If you are running a production environment, it is often advisable to get along with the platform supported by redash.

Since we too _like to live dangerously, in this tutorial we will install redash on a newly created CentOS instance. _

Do you pine for the days when men were men and wrote their own device drivers? – Linus Torvalds

Why to install on CentOS 6 when it’s not a supported platform?

Ian: Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. – Jurassic Park

Below is the docker container used for testing above scripts. Make sure that the allocated RAM to docker is more than 5GB (Docker > Preferences > Resouces - Memory). Otherwise the container will be limited to the max docker RAM size.